These two booklets about the navy during the American Revolutionary War are titled "The Capture of the Margaretta", which was the first naval battle of the Revolution, and "Commodore Samuel Tucker", who was one of the first naval heroes of the Revolution. "The Capture of the Margaretta" was read before the Maine Historical Society on June 10, 1887 by George Talbot and the title on the front cover reads "Collections And Proceedings Of The Maine Historical Society, Quarterly Part No. 1, January 1891"; it was published by Brown Thurston Company of Portland, Maine, which is very fitting, because the battle of the Margaretta was fought around the port of Machias, Maine. The battle took place on June 12, 1775, and it involved the British sloop Margaretta, which was captured by a party of Americans led by Captain Jeremiah O'Brien. The background to the capture was the siege of Boston by General Washington after the battles at Lexington and Concord: following the outbreak of the war, British authorities enlisted Loyalist merchant Ichabod Jones to supply British troops who were surrounded during the siege. Two of his merchant ships arrived in Machias on June 2, accompanied by the armed British sloop HMS Margaretta, commanded by Midshipman James Moore. The townspeople of Machias disapproved of Jones' intentions and arrested him; they tried to arrest Moore, but he escaped through the harbor. The townspeople seized one of Jones' ships, armed it along with a second local ship, and sailed out to meet Moore. After a short confrontation, Moore was fatally wounded, and his vessel and crew were captured. Some people called this the "Lexington of the Seas", after the battle at Lexington, which started the opening salvo of the war. With their captain down, the crew of the Margaretta quickly surrendered. They were later turned over to the Massachusetts Provincial Congress. Machias patriots went on to capture numerous British vessels during the war and many became part of the Continental Navy, and the Battle of Machias has the distinction of being the first naval battle of the American Revolution. Samuel Tucker (1847 - 1833) was a native of Marblehead, Mass., his father and grandfather were brought up on the sea, and not much is known about his early life, but he worked as a cabin boy on a British frigate when he was eleven and in the merchant service just after the French and Indian War ended in 1763, when he was just sixteen. Tucker was in England when the American Revolution broke out, and when he returned to this country, he had the distinction of being appointed captain by George Washington with one of the first commissions issued by the great American leader; it was dated Jan. 20, 1776, and Tucker served as captain until that spring, when he moved to another ship because that captain resigned, and Tucker became unofficial commodore of George Washington's fleet. In March 1777, Tucker received a commission in the Continental Navy and commanded a small flotilla of armed schooners that preyed on British shipping, and Tucker was so successful he was appointed to command one and John Paul Jones was given command of another; he even captured two brigs right under the eyes of the British command, and their cargoes and foodstuffs were badly needed by the American Continental army. Tucker was so trusted that in 1778 he transported John Adams to secret negotiations with France when Adams was foreign minister to that country - Adams was future President of the United States - and the voyage was not without danger. Tucker sailed from Braintree, Mass. in February, 1778, and halfway across the Atlantic, his ship was nearly dismasted in a lightning storm that injured 20 sailors. According to John Adams' diary, one of the sailors had a hole burnt in the top of his head from the lightning and soon died "raving mad." On another occasion, three British warships gave chase to the frigate, and avoiding contact with the ships as much as possible, Tucker was finally forced to fight. He maneuvered one ship so his own crossed the enemy's T, his own ship's guns raked the length of the British ship, and soon the enemy ship struck her colors and surrendered. Adams arrived safely in Bordeaux on April 1. After the war, Tucker moved to Bristol, Maine in 1792 and became a selectman of the town, and he held a similar office in Bremen, Maine. At the time of his death in 1832, he was the highest ranking officer to survive the American Revolution, except for General Lafayette. Commodore Tucker died the following year. The biography of Commodore Tucker comes in an article from Volume II of the New-England Magazine, dated February 1832, and the article is titled "Commodore Tucker" and runs in small print from page 138 to page 145. The booklet measures 9 1/2 x 6 in. wide and comes in a custom-fitted box which measures 10 5/8 x 6 3/4 in. wide and has "Commodore Tucker 1832" in gilt lettering on the spine. The booklet is string-bound, with light marks on the front cover, soiling and light creases on the first page of the booklet, which is not related to Commodore Tucker, the pages and text for the article are clean, with faint browning in a couple of margins, and there's just a tad of rubbing at the top and bottom of the spine and at the tips of the custom-box. The Margaretta booklet measures 10 7/8 x 6 in. wide and has splits along the edges of the spine, a small crease and a missing piece at one tip of the front cover, 17 pages of clean text and margins, some pages are uncut, and the custom-fitted box for the Margaretta reads "The Capture Of The Margaretta - Talbot - 1887" in gilt letters on the spine and measures 10 7/8 x 6 3/4 in. wide, with tads of rubbing at the top and bottom of the spine and at the tips of the custom box, and together the two booklets provide a good background to early naval history during the American Revolutionary war. The booklets are rare, too. We've found no copies from the Maine Historical Society for 1891 listed online and only one each for 1892, 1895, 1898, 1900, 1901, and 1902; the rest are modern reprints that run from $23 to $100 apiece. The New-England Magazine from 1832 is just about impossible to find - we found one copy that has detached covers, heavy damage, and foxing that goes for $44 and six issues that include 1832 that go for $65, and a full set that runs from 1831 to 1835 goes for $1600, and we have the two original booklets together with custom-fitted boxes going for much less than any of them except the modern reprints. The New-England Magazine was a monthly literary magazine published in Boston from 1831 to 1835, and it was perhaps the most important general magazine published in New England before the birth of The Atlantic Monthly; it achieved that distinction by paying contributors $1 a page for their work, which was quite a hefty sum in the 1800's, and as a consequence, contributions poured in, including works by Longfellow, Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr., Nathaniel Hawthorne and John Greenleaf Whittier. The magazine published a total of 48 editions and that was it, so this is one of the few that have survived. #151 #1612